Page 23 - C:\Users\ikm\OneDrive\Documents\Flip PDF\BiTS_08_AUGUST_2020\

“BLUES HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY ROOT – THAT’S FOR SURE” – AN INTERVIEW WITH
MAGDA PISKORCZYK

by Norman Darwen

Polish singer and multi—instrumentalist Magda Piskorczyk (pronounced “peas—kor—cheek”) is
best—known for her strong, deep voice, her fondness for older blues styles. She has appeared in
Britain – she sang gospel in Liverpool some years back, and it would be good to see her again
over here. She provides some background:

PHOTO BY IREK GRAFF How did you get started in
music?
Well, probably I won’t be very
original in saying that I was born
with music and in music as well. I
was lucky enough to be born in a

family where music was truly
important, and I was listening to
soul, gospel, blues, disco from the
70s, and rock ‘n’ roll from the 60s
since I was a toddler.

How did you begin in the blues?
You mean listen to it or play the
blues myself? If you are asking me
about listening to the blues, well,
I’ve been listening to the blues since

I was a child. Playing and
performing the blues started some
time later. As a teenager I said I wanted to try something else, and I started singing in a thrash metal
band—not only because of my low, strong voice but also because of the fact that I met such nice people
who happened to play this style of music—so I took a chance. And I also wanted to share music and
creative thoughts with someone on stage and behind that too. I am a Nomad soul as well, so I wanted
to travel with music too. What an adventure it was! After a short while I realized that singing about

death walking around the globe and the world falling apart was not my thing. Well, at least those
were the lyrics that at that time were pretty trendy in thrash metal. Truly, I have no idea what it is
like now. Ha ha ha—not that blues is all about joy and happiness! And also my friend in the band was
a bit worried that the girl had a much lower singing voice than he had.

So that band adventure came to the end for me. I just had to quit. And I got back to the blues again
with true pleasure and knowing that this is a heartbeat of mine and I simply love it. Period. When I
say “the blues”, I mean all those truly old blues songs, gospel, country blues recordings from the 30s.
These were my beginnings and it is a true root for me. I love all those African melodies, polyrhythmic
things too. I adore this wonderful freedom in chords, time and lyrics. Awesome! All of these features
of the blues brought me to African music research, making me explore it more and more. This is the
blues part of my heart. But I am also open to different styles of music, I am listening to a lot of different

styles, not only the blues. But the blues has been and always will be my root. That’s for sure.